After RMA replacing my Gigabyte 5700xt, the snap crackle pop crash seems to be fixed (cross fingers), but then I get a new problem: overheating.
First sign was seeing my 970 EVO running hot, around 65 C even when idle. Thought it was just the drive itself, then realized it was the whole motherboard heating up. Fiddled with my OC configs for days (to no avail) before I think I found the source of the problem.
The GPU heats up like crazy even when idle, because I guess macos uses the GPU a lot more than Windows? The GPU in turn heats up the mobo's PCH and the nvme area right underneath it.
So I set the fan curve using AMD's adrenaline app, turned of the zero RPM feature. And that fan curve profile is respected under Windows. I set the minimum fan speed to about 1100RPM, and I can see that under GPU-Z, and I can hear it too.
But under macos, I can't see the fan speed, since iStat menus don't recognize 5700xt yet. But I can tell it's not respecting the fan curve profile, because I can't hear the damn GPU fans.
Questions is: How does macos know when to turn on the GPU's fans? And at what temps? I've seen the nvme drive temp reach to around 70 C, at which point I boot into Windows to see the GPU temp at over 50 C (with VRAM around 55 C), and macOS hadn't turned on the fan. But under windows, those fans would immediately start spinning at over 2000RPM.
Frustrated, I even upgraded to Big Sur, hoping its drivers would have better fan control, but it's the same thing.
How do you guys deal with the GPU overheating? Especially with a mini-ITX board like Asus z390-i, where the GPU is sitting right on top of the NVME slot and the PCH? Is there a fan curve utility for navi-based cards that will work under macos, cuz it's not recognizing any profile I create under windows.